


When I Was Seventeen

by qthelights



Category: Bon Jovi, Rock Music RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Blow Jobs, Brotherly Love, Character Study, Current Events, Friendship/Love, Hand Jobs, Inspired by Real Events, Kissing, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, New Jersey, Past Events, Pool Table Sex, Realization, Reflection, Richie's leaving, Sad, past sex, self discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:11:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1404328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qthelights/pseuds/qthelights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was 17 years old Jon knew exactly what he wanted in life with a surety that people often tell him belied his age. At 52, he has what he wanted and yet finds himself at a loss.</p><p>Wherein Jon comes to terms with Richie's leaving the tour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I Was Seventeen

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a companion piece to the Richie pov piece [Emerald City](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1146171). 
> 
> Thanks to Sara and Steph for their valued opinions :)

When he was 17 years old Jon knew exactly what he wanted in life with a surety that people often tell him belied his age. At 52, he has what he wanted and yet finds himself at a loss. Tonight, in particular, he feels adrift. Restless and unsure of what to do appease it.

He’s had dinner. Done the dishes instead of throwing them in the dishwasher just for something to fucking do. Tidied up the piles of correspondence and miscellaneous paperwork that has accumulated on his desk during his time away. He’s wandered the house. More than once. 

He knows it’s always like this after a tour. Especially around this time of night when he’d usually be on stage and his body thinks he’s about to be. His veins start to itch and his breathing increases ever so slightly. Warm ripples of adrenaline flow through his muscles, readying them to fight, to perform.

It’s just the comedown from the tour, he tells himself. It’ll pass, like it always does. Might take a few more weeks. It’s just normal bodily response. He ignores the part of him that whispers it’s never been this bad before. 

Stepping out into the cold New Jersey air he wraps his arms around himself. Watches his breath puff out into the black night, illuminated by the light from the windows at his back. Ahead of him the Navesink is a dark and silent serpent, winding its way home to the sea.

The night is loud with silence. No screaming fans fill his ears, just quiet snaps and crackles as animals rustle in the brush, the sound of water sluggishly lapping at the riverbank. A screech owl calls from the nearby woodland, a round trembling purr that fades away eerily into the night like the soundtrack to a haunted house. 

Shivering, he pulls the sleeves of his henley down over his fingers and ventures further out from the house, gravel crunching under his boots. He has no reason to, nowhere to go, but it seems the thing to do, to walk on his land, survey his kingdom. 

He follows the path absentmindedly until he realises he’s going to end up at the recording studio and his stomach tightens uncomfortably. Right now he doesn’t care if he never sets foot in there again. What he’ll do with the place if he doesn’t… He couldn’t tear it down. It would be too disgustingly wasteful. A slap in the face to everything he’s spent his life building. Part of him wants to, though, wants to rage and yell and rip it out of the ground like a weed.

Maybe he’ll just lease it out. Let Mariah-fucking-Carey set up musical camp in his backyard.

He changes direction, heads out across the dew-damp grass into the the compound proper. He needs a drink. There's booze in the house, of course, but he needs more solitude than the big house with it's bright lights holds. He heads instead to the Inn, guided by headlights of the few solitary cars that pass on the road behind it.

The grass is slippery so he goes slow until he reaches the stone pavers set into the ground. When he'd put them in, he’d thought they were quaint, like a little road that would lead up to a pub in the middle of some medieval England village. Now he's just glad that their white stone surface glints in the moonlight. They look like giant lilypads on a pond of grass. Of course he could find the Shoe blindfolded and crawling. Has done so, in fact, and many times has had to find his to the house from there in just such a condition. But fuck it, he's feeling old and fragile and anything that helps him stay upright is a good thing.

Ironic, really, as he wants to drink his way horizontal.

He fishes the hidden key from under the one loose weatherboard. The door creaks as it opens. 

Inside it's musty, empty from more disuse than just the period of his absence. Even well before they headed out on tour it had been underused. When Richie stopped drinking they'd kind of gravitated elsewhere. Somehow, drinking in the house while Richie sipped on soda water seemed less gauche. Less like rubbing it in his face, not that Richie had ever protested. Not that he would.

Jon had always thought that was one of Richie's steadfast qualities, actually. Always doing whatever was in his power to make the least amount of fuss possible. A universal constant of Richie.

Nothing’s constant as it turns out.

He leaves the main lights off, shuffling inside in the pitch blackness and fumbling for the faux-Tiffany desk lamp kept on the side table by the door. With a flick of the switch the room is bathed in shadows. 

The warm mahogany wood of the bar is covered in a layer of dust. With no one using it he could hardly see the reason to spend good money on cleaning it. His 17 year old self would scoff at the idea of owning his own bar and yet letting it sit idle and dirty.

His 21 year old self would have strippers on it.

Behind the sinuous curve of wood he picks a bottle of red at random, sets it on the bar while he locates a bottle opener. The cork comes out of the bottle with a round deep pop, the aroma of astringent tannins assaulting his nose as they escape their glass tomb. Briefly, he thinks about just drinking straight from the bottle, but his older self prevails and plucks a wide-mouthed wine glass from the rack hanging above his head. The liquid splashes crimson into the glass, turns burgundy as it fills.

He takes the glass, _and_ the bottle, and moves to one of the comfortable armchairs arranged around the fire. It’s cold enough that he could light it, but he honestly can’t be bothered. It’s cold, but the bitter outside chill hasn’t penetrated inside.

The first sip is leathery against his tongue and he follows it quickly with a larger gulp. He knows from experience and lonely nights in hotel rooms post concert, that eventually the wine will push back the adrenaline and calm his nerves. The rest of the bottle will allow him to sleep.

He stares absently at one of the photos hanging on the wall. It’s one of the band in the early 80s. Black and white, full of youthful exuberance and horrendous clothing. There’s nothing particularly special about it, it’s just a group shot of the five of them, all smiles and hair. Looking at it reminds Jon of how he felt back after the Jersey Syndicate tour, brings feelings to the fore that are not uncomplicated. 

As the wine starts to work its way into his bloodstream he slumps down, lets his head fall back against the wing of the chair. He continues to look at the photo. The thing he knows he’s been avoiding since he got back starts to creep in around the edges of his mind. 

He’s molded this band since the beginning. He had his dream, his 17 year old naive dream, and he fucking made it a reality. He picked the players, the direction, the songs. And then he got the record deal.

Not that it was easy. It sounds easy now, in retrospect. But it wasn’t. Every musical note of that success, every dollar, every second of airtime, every magazine article, interview, car and house bought was blood from stone. Every part of it he crafted. Hours spent with Richie, fingers sore and voices raw from perfecting a song. Nitpicking chords and word choices and emotions. 

He was the one that made the band go out, found them opportunities before they were anybody. The one who agonised over the soundboard at their concerts to make sure the shows were beyond criticism. It was he that fired Alec, fired Doc. It’s been constant energy, to keep the house of cards from falling, the dream of being a rock star alive. One false move, wrong step, the smallest loss of control and it could all fall away the way so many of the bands have over the years. It’s his dream though, and he's always believed no one can take that away from him. 

The flip to side to that belief being that only _he_ can lose it.

It’s not that he thinks he did it on his own, of course he fucking didn’t, he thinks bitterly as he looks at the faces in the photo. Richie with the ridiculous mullet-like hair, higher than his face is long, David with his half-straightened, half-curly mane. Tico looking like the most baby-faced enforcer to walk the streets. Alec, skinny and swaggering..

These are his guys. They became his band, and there is nothing - _nothing_ \- more important to him than his band. It’s his _dream_. He isn’t exaggerating when he says they’re his brothers, even if the catchphrase became so often repeated over the years he knows it sometimes rings false in its flippant casualness. He knows these guys better than his genetic brothers. He knows their secrets, their fears, their hopes. He knows what they’d rather forget, who they fucked, who they fucked over. He’s known them at their best, and at their worst. And he’d die for any one of them.

When he’d fired Alec, he’d done so with a ruthless surety. He’d had to, because if he let himself care, for even a second, he couldn’t have done it. Alec knew it was coming, the guys knew it had to happen, so it wasn’t like he didn’t have some sort of a mandate to go ahead with it. But it was still him, sitting across from Alec at the kitchen table, who’d had to deliver the words.

He’s the boss, he had to be the boss. No one else stepped up when Doc fucked them over, and in the end, he had to take control. If he’d known from the start he had to be the CEO to achieve the dream he’d have done it from the start and saved them all a lot of pain. Mind you, had he known at 17 that his dream was a lot of work, maybe he wouldn’t have had the fire enough to achieve it.

He refills his glass and puts the bottle back on the floor by his side. His legs stick straight out in front of him. If it weren’t so jarringly wrong for his mood he’d cross his ankles, but it is and he doesn’t.

Even though he’s the boss, he knows that without those guys, he wouldn’t be where he is. He needed them every step of the way, even if okay yeah, he’s realist, and maybe he could still have made it without them, with other guys in their place. But that’s not how it played out, and they’re his friends and he doesn’t want it to have played out any other way, for there to have been other guys, and that’s what matters most of all, isn’t it? It feels like it should matter. It’s always felt like it should matter.

He fucking hates change, and heisn’t stupid enough to deny that he wouldn’t like change even if his band were a bunch of assholes. In short, he lucked out. He coulda spent 30 years with people he hated just to be a rockstar in a famous rock band. Or maybe he wouldn’t even have been that lucky; maybe people he hated wouldn’t have put up with his passive-aggressive bullshit and would have left at the first hurdle. Maybe he wouldn’t even have got to the top.

He rolls his eyes at the thought. He’s always more honest when he drinks, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hear himself.

The wine is settling warmly in his belly, loosening the muscles in his arms and legs, fogging up his mind. He wishes it would happen faster, even as he enjoys the slow slide into mellow.

His eyes flicker back to Richie in the photo. He’s so young, dimples creasing his cheeks as he smiles sweetly. So innocent and full of hope. A pang of sorrow shoots through Jon’s chest so powerfully he has to clutch his hand to his breast for a second, catch his breath. 

“Asshole,” he growls loudly, an explosive shot into the dark quiet of the room.

He regrets it immediately and yet feels unappeased that it didn’t have more effect at the same time. Anger and hurt war within him, lumping in his throat. He forces more wine past it.

_Fucking Richie._

Richie is the thing Jon has been so careful not to think about. Ever since that day when he got the call, the call Richie didn’t even have the balls to make himself. 

At first, when he’d heard one of the guys on the other end of the line, their voice hesitant and terrified, he’d thought something had happened. His heart had lurched into his mouth and his legs had gone to jelly and he’d barely heard the next thing the guy had said because all he’d heard was _“I’m sorry Jon, it’s about Richie,”_ and he’d thought it was one of _those_ calls. The calls that change your life irrevocably and take a piece of you with them.

Of course, that’s exactly what it had been, although Richie hadn’t been dead, wasn’t in jail or rehab, nor lying somewhere on a bathroom floor with a needle in his arm. Richie wasn’t even _hurt_. When the fear had worn off all that was left was anger, anger at the level of emotion he’d just flung himself into. Anger that Richie could make him feel so embarrassingly much when clearly Richie cared nothing at all about him.

That had been closely followed by disbelief, and then absolute howling fury. That night, after a concert that went badly, where the guys missed notes and the back-up guitar player didn’t know the chords, when they gone on 45 minutes late and Jon had to ask the crowd for help and mean it, something he swore he’d never do… After that? All Jon had felt was numb.

His calls to Richie’s cell that weekend went unanswered, presumably screened. Dave and Tico reported similar and all three of them stood in a hotel room and just looked at each other, at a loss. Phil X got on a plane. 

They didn’t talk about Richie after that. Not really. Not about what happened. He presumes that Dave and T probably did, when he wasn’t there. But together, as a band, it was situation normal, only with Phil. Richie wasn’t _not there_ , he just wasn’t _there_. Exactly like after Richie broke his arm and fucked himself up in ‘06. And like in 2011.

It’s not like they hadn’t spoken at all. There had been a couple of text messages, laden with meaning and meaning nothing. There were the endless press conferences where he’d get the question, the fans he met on the street who would ask, _where’s Richie, is he coming back?_ But Jon answered dutifully, said the right thing and locked the real feelings down deep. He hadn’t had time to dwell, he had a tour to run.

The tour is done now and there’s too much time to think, nowhere near enough distractions to hide in. Richie’s done interviews, Jon’s heard things. He wants to say he doesn’t get it, why Richie would do this to him. But it’s _Richie_ and he gets the action of it, if not the reason. This is Richie’s way of acting out, like a kid rebelling against his folks. Hell, it’s about time one of them had a mid-life crisis. It’s been a good ten years since Teek had his. What Jon doesn’t get is why, or at least, _why now_.

Jon knows he hasn’t been a saint to Richie or to any of the guys. But he’s never hidden who he is, and hell, he’s become who he is with them at his side. It isn’t a surprise to them that he’s a fucking neurotic bastard with control issues. If he’s taken Richie for granted then Richie is just as much complicit in it as he is. 

He’s cognizant of the fact that he should loosen the reins. Should have given Richie more time to tour or have let him get his neediness out for Jon when he needed to. But sometimes Richie’s need for Jon’s approval, for affection, is uncomfortable. It makes him feel like he’s losing control because he doesn’t know what to do with the feelings it curdles in his stomach. Makes him pull back and scoff and act like he’s so tough, the boss, because if he doesn’t it’s too much. Just too much. He’s no one’s Jesus.

He thought he’d done enough for Richie to be okay though. That he’d stepped out of comfort zone, just often enough and just far enough, to let Richie know what he means to him. He’d given him more of the money, even though Richie didn’t do anywhere near the work he did just in terms of logistics and management. It’s the same with all the guys, and Jon’s not gonna apologise for that. It’s just economics. But Richie did write the songs with him, Richie was his co-conspirator in creation. And well, Richie’s his closest friend, even if he doesn’t admit it in _every single interview_ the way Richie might. So he gave him more than the percentage that had been written into the contracts back in the day.

He thought Richie knew, the way the guys all know, that he’s him, and he’s an asshole sometimes because he has to be. That he has to be in control because the alternative scares the shit out of him. He doesn’t let them know how he feels about them explicitly because they should know it. They have to know it because they’re still there. He hates change and will do anything to avoid it, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he wouldn’t _want_ anyone but them with him even if he was willing and happy to change them out.

He’s encouraged Richie’s solo albums, has dedicated whole albums to Richie’s prowess, has let him sing lead on certain songs on tour, wraps an arm around him after _Wanted_ , shares the damn air in his lungs with him when they use the same mic. He’s made a special embarrassing effort to make a big deal of every one of Richie’s birthdays even though he himself thinks birthdays are ridiculous. Richie loves birthdays, gets joyous and then softly quiet and thankful like it means the _world_ to him and so Jon obliges. Even on stage. He makes sure someone gets a cake and a present. Makes the fucking card himself and if they’re home, will even make the stupid cake because that’s what Richie finds important. Richie’s a dork like that. And Jon loves him for it.

His throat tightens further and he suddenly needs to be moving, to not be sitting, not be helpless. He stands abruptly and paces the room. Needs a smoke but there probably aren’t any cigarettes. He vaguely remembers telling someone to throw them all out the last time he’d quit. But maybe...

He searches behind the bar, opening draws and fruitlessly searching through their contents to no avail. Mother fucker. There have to be some somewhere. Just the law of averages suggests that they can’t all have been gotten rid of. He was fucking good at hiding them, back in the day when he wasn’t quite sure he’d go the distance. 

He strikes gold in a box down in the back corner of the bar full of cleaning rags and odds and ends. His fingers wrap around the flimsy cardboard and its cellophane cover, and he knows instinctively that it’s smokes. When he pulls his hand back, they aren’t even his brand. Doesn’t matter. They’ll do.

Matches are much easier to find and he takes one of the little match books pilfered from one of a thousand hotels and heads over to the other side of the room, rests his ass against the side of the pool table and taps one of the cigarettes loose, places it between his lips. The match is bright in the dark corner of the room, flaring sulphuric white before he holds it to the end of the cigarette and inhales.

Smoke hits the back of his throat and its been so long that he has to fight the urge to cough like a 14 year old behind the bike shed. The next drag is pure relief, his body’s muscle memory kicking in and he holds the smoke in his lungs a moment before letting it snake out of his mouth. His exhale kicks the tendrils out in a rush and the feel is heady, a buzz as much from the illicitness as from the nicotine. Probably more so from the illicitness. 

He’s only having this one, so he leaves the pack on the leather-covered pool table, the matches with it. Wandering to the windows he looks out on the wide expanse of lawn, the guest house a black absence of moonlight in the landscape. With a rueful grin he brings the cigarette back up in his pinched fingers. The guest house. 

Inhale. 

_Richie’s_ guest house. 

Exhale.

He turns back into the room to avoid the line of thought. It doesn’t help; this room is just as much about Richie as any place that Jon owns. Back in the day this was where they’d get smashed after a day of writing, or recording. After an impromptu party with some execs from Manhattan they needed to impress. Or just because they’d finished lunch. They didn’t really need a reason, when they were younger. God, what was he when he built the house? Thirty-five,’six? Something like that. Fuck but that makes him feel old. They’d been such kids, even then. 

His eyes land on the cigarette pack again, white against the dark table under it. Richie had blown him once, on that pool table. Jon’s pretty sure Richie doesn’t even remember it. If he does he’s never mentioned it since, and Richie _would_. If for no other reason than to see if Jon would let him do it again sober. Jon wouldn’t, though he’d want to.

They had been so drunk. Disgustingly drunk to the point it was a wonder they were both conscious. The party had petered out, Dave had left to walk home, Teek had followed to make sure he got there and to crash in one of Dave’s guest rooms. All the girls had left sometime before that with various guys from the crew and management. It couldn’t have been more than a year or two after he moved into the place.

He and Richie had hooked up before, here and there. It’s one of the reasons Jon’s sure that Richie _must_ know what he means to him. He would _never_ , not with a guy, not _like that_. Not because he’s a homophobe, okay not much of one, he spent most of the 80s being told he was in a faggot band afterall, but because it doesn’t work with the image that he needs to portray, it wouldn’t work with the band, nor the dream. With Richie though, it had seemed so natural, when they were young, after concerts. To just give into the need for human touch and to jerk each other off in hotel rooms on the come down. 

Even after they ‘grew up’ it had happened a couple more times. Just hands though, and kissing, but kissing is just what you do when you’re jacking off another guy. You can’t just stare into their eyes, for christ’s sake. 

And okay, maybe they’d rutted against each other, laid against each other and reveled in the feel of a human body, a trusted person and the need for companionship, on the rare occasion. But they were just that, _rare_. Jon knows who he is, and that isn’t it. Not permanently, not all the time or anything. He loves women and women love him, and the idea of him loving them. But sometimes, it’s been Richie who was there, and it was nice. He knows Richie, and behind closed doors, he’s comfortable with Richie. There’s a special kind of thrill, in getting to experience something like that with a friend who you’re not supposed to do that sort of thing with. 

But yeah, none of it was particularly x-rated. Just the kind of things experiments lead to, hands and kisses and comfort. And okay, technically, it would be classified as sex - there were fluids and naked cocks after all - but it wasn’t, in Jon’s mind, ‘sex’. It was just them. That’s all it needed to be.

Except that one night on the pool table. 

It must have been 2000, maybe early 2001. Richie had been perched on one of the bar chairs as Jon had deluded himself into thinking he had the coordination to sink the eight ball into the corner pocket. Richie had started laughing as Jon had missed the cue ball and sworn as he almost marked the felt. His head was thrown back and he had a bottle of jack between his fingers and Jon had looked at him and in that moment he had loved the man so fiercely it was unbearable. He was so very, very drunk, and his hair was so short, shorter than Jon had ever known it and he realised they hadn’t ever been close, like _that_ , while Richie looked that way. He’d never felt his fingers through those short strands, and it looked so silky and soft and totally unlike Richie’s usual birdsnest of fluffy hair. It was so silly, and yet at that moment, something Jon could not let lie.

Richie had stopped laughing as Jon had thrown the cue on the table and stalked towards him. Jon had loved the power of it, the way Richie’s brown eyes grew wide and his adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. Richie had fumbled the bottle onto the shelf behind him, somehow without spilling it if Jon remembers correctly. And then he’d been off the chair and in Jon’s space and Jon was backed against the pool table. 

The kiss tasted of whiskey and wine and stale cigarette smoke and it was the hottest thing Jon thinks he’s ever experienced. Suddenly the table had been under his back and Richie had been between his legs and billiard balls were rolling past his head as they slapped them out of the way. He’d been so hard, so desperate, and maybe it was the alcohol talking and maybe it wasn’t, but he’d never felt like that before, maybe hasn’t since.

He’s pretty sure, ninety-nine per cent, though it’s a little fuzzy, that he begged Richie to go down on him. There may have been words like, “need” and “suck me,” and “fuck, Richie, _please_.”

All he remembers next in any case is hot wet heat around his cock and craning his neck up off the table to see Richie’s mop of shaggy, short hair in his lap and the sucking, god, the sucking. How long he lasted is anyone’s guess, but he remembers coming, fingers woven around strands of that hair, and he remembers Richie groaning, jerking and come spilling out of his surprised mouth, dribbling down his chin. 

He does remember, _vividly_ , that he was gonna be pissed if Rich got it on the fucking table.

He probably said so too if the way Richie had swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and then grinned, wide, evil and gorgeous, was any indication. Richie had climbed back onto him then, barely got his pants down before he was striping his own come across Jon’s stomach and t-shirt, cock in hand. They drifted off, woke up a half hour later stuck together, uncomfortable and groggy, and Jon had deposited Richie at the guest house on his way across to the main house. 

The hangover had been so bad that he didn’t even see Richie until the following night. And Richie never ever mentioned the one time Jon Bon Jovi had needed him so much he’d let him do something so intimate as put his dick in Richie’s mouth. It may have been sex, as close to explicit and dirty as they’d ever gotten, but Jon knows it was also a lot more like love than he’s comfortable with. Just the fact that Jon had wanted _that_ to happen said volumes.

He’s never been sure though, if Richie remembered, because Richie is also caring like that. Takes care of Jon even when Jon’s a fucking asshole to him. He’d probably know that there’d be no way Jon could live with having needed him that much, at having given Richie that much control. Shown him the honest love of letting him into a place so raw and unguarded. 

But then, Richie probably doesn’t remember. He’s always been a sloppy drunk. Probably because there’s nothing he’d do drunk he wouldn’t do sober, so there’d be no need to remember any of it really. And clearly Richie doesn’t care anymore, so...

His eyes prickle and Jon slaps his hand down on the pool table, a dull thump echoing in the room. “Fuck,” he curses, lets his head hang and the cigarette dangle at the end of his arm. Ash shivers to the floor.

Jon is 52 years old and he feels like he’s back just past puberty again. He doesn’t know what think, who to hate, who to love, who to pull close and who to push away. The last time he felt this confused was when he’d realised that Alec had to go. He didn’t know if it would ruin the band, knew that keeping him definitely would. He didn’t want to let his brother go, had fought it until he was fighting Alec himself. That was what gave him the necessary distance to go through with it, to be able to brush him off as if he didn’t care. Alec had gotten one chance after fucking up. Richie’s had two already. This makes three. Why should Jon even be considering not telling Richie to fuck off?

It should be so simple. The maths is sound. The compass that has guided him thus far, pointed the way to the dream, has always proven true. It’s gotten him to where he is now. A household name, 12 studio albums, 150 million records sold, concerts in every country on the planet, thousands of them. When he thinks about it it makes his head spin. Even as a teenager he couldn’t possibly imagine. It’s more than what he wanted as just some punk kid with a guitar and a desire to get chicks. He got it by ruthless ambition, tight control, and strict adherence to the rules - and if the regimen can accomplish that, he knows that it should be nothing, a blip on the radar of time, to just let Richie go.

And yet, he can’t. And part of him hates himself for that. It feels like a failure, to have to prostrate himself to Richie’s behaviour, say sweetly that Richie always has a place in Bon Jovi. It doesn’t make any sense, business-wise. 

As the moon dips lower outside, ethereal cold light shining through the windows, and his cigarette burns to nothing, Jon lets the real fear in. 

He slides to the floor, back against the wall and draws up his legs. Stubs the cigarette out on the floor like he’s a teenager rebelling. He’s been holding on so tightly to the idea, the dream, the _xanadu_ , that his 17 year old self had, so scared of it slipping away like a mirage that he’s never considered that maybe his 17 year old self was _wrong_.

The thought shudders through him with a sob and he struggles to choke the emotion back, closes his eyes tight and rests his forehead on his arms. 

He has what he wanted, he got the dream, and he steadfastly wants to keep achieving it, to go higher and higher and become… what? The best? The most? Why does he hold The Stones as his end point when he himself says he won’t ever become that, won’t be a nostalgia band? Is it just an endless ladder of rungs to achieve, is there no real end? Will the day come where there’s nothing next? And if that’s so, then why is he sitting on the floor in the pub on his million dollar estate, smoking, drinking, and trying not to break into a million shattered pieces? 

Richie shouldn’t matter in the equation.

Richie does. 

At the end of the day, what he’s failed to admit to himself, is that he loves Richie. He’s only ever felt this way after breaking up with people. Richie is his best friend, his carer, his brother, his real compass. And without him it feels like someone has reached in and uprooted him. Taken away his moorings and set him adrift. He was so smug, so _certain_ that he had it figured out, had to have or he wouldn’t have achieved what he did.

And he was wrong. Because all this time he missed the point, missed the real truth in the way only a 17 year old could, that it isn’t about the destination, but the journey. About the people on it with him. He thought it was his aversion to change, the reason he kept the guys with him. But it isn’t. 

They’re his _friends_. And he somehow missed what that actually meant. What _Richie_ meant. 

And now it’s maybe too late.

Even if he gives him another chance, he’s not sure that Richie will take it. It’s a thought that sits like a stone in the bottom of his stomach. But that tells him something, nonetheless.

He thought he controlled it all, the circus around him, the balls in the air. And now he realises that it wasn’t true and he never did. That without the band, the crew, _Richie_ , he’s just a guy so scared of losing everything that he pushed everyone away.

He sits there, in the dark of the room, for a long time. Maybe minutes. Maybe hours. 

When he finally moves, finally thinks he won’t split apart at the seams, he pushes himself off the floor. His knees creak and pop and he laughs, bitter and sad. 

Maybe he can go back to the house, dial a number he knows by heart and have Richie answer the phone with a warm, _“Hey, man, long time no speak,”_ like nothing’s wrong. 

Or maybe he’ll stare at the phone too chicken-shit to do anything. Stare at it and will it to ring. For Richie, wherever he is, at the beach, at a party, in _Australia_ , to feel it and call _him_.

He leaves the cigarettes on the pool table, the empty wine glass on the bar, takes the bottle from the floor and swigs a sour mouthful. His limbs feel heavy, adrenaline and emotion spent and lethargy in their wake. His eyes are scratchy behind his eyelids. At least he’ll sleep tonight. 

He flips the switch on the lamp, plunging the room into real darkness. Cold hits him like a slap to the face as he steps back into the night and he cradles the wine bottle to his chest as if for warmth.

For the first time in a long time he has no plan. No idea what he will do with the band, with the unravelling threads of his misplaced dreams, with Richie. 

It scares the shit out of him, but maybe that’s okay. 

Maybe it’s supposed to. 


End file.
